


The Nature of Magic

by fowl68



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fear of Magic, Muggles, Protectiveness, Sisters, Squibs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:43:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fowl68/pseuds/fowl68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Petunia is almost a witch and a never-will-be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nature of Magic

_"Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it and it will never be used to hurt you."  
-Tyrion (Game of Thrones)_

* * *

Petunia doesn't hate her sister for who she is, for her brightshining personality, her unfailing kindness or her red hair that glowed sometimes if the sun hit it just right. _(Sometimes, she wanted to know, why not her? Why couldn't she have been red-haired and pretty too?)_ She hates her for what she can do.

Magic comes so easily to Lily. Petunia has seen it since the very first time, when she made a daisy chain bloom into dandelions. It happens without thought, without effort even. Petunia asked, once, what it felt like.

Lily had tilted her head back to look up at the clouds, leaning back on her arms in the grass. "…It feels like…something's let go." Petunia had frowned at her, confused. Lily sat up all the way to try to explain herself better. "It's…here," Lily pointed at a spot on her chest just below her collarbone. "And—does it ever feel tight to you? Like it makes a little hard to breath?"

Petunia lies that day and tells her no, that she doesn't know how it feels. It's not quite suffocating, but it's close.

"When I use magic, it…lets go. I can breathe and…it's wonderful, Tuney, it's wonderful."

A decade and a half later, Petunia wonders as she reads the letter tucked into her nephew's blankets if Lily still thought magic was so wonderful as it killed her.

She looks at the baby—he hasn't cried and it's a strange thing because Dudley's always crying. He hasn't cried, only looks at her with eyes that seem too wide for his face, an angry red cut on his forehead _(She knew those eyes the moment she saw. Lily's eyes, the ones that shone with excitement when she saw that letter, the ones that lit up when that_ boy _came out to play with them, the ones that turned dim in death, never to be re-lit. Yes, Petunia knew those eyes)_

The boy would have magic, Petunia knows and thinks of her ordinary husband and son. Vernon disapproves of magic—waste of time, nothing productive. Petunia has heard these things ever since Vernon came for dinner with her parents and Lily and James and saw what her sister was capable of doing—and Dudley, Dudley doesn't know a thing about it.

But this boy, yes, this boy—Harry, the letter reads, and it's a terrible name for a child—would have magic. And where has magic gotten her family? Her mother had died when she was sixteen and her father, she can't imagine her father right now, with his little girl dead and who would tell him? Would some of Lily's people do it or would it fall to Petunia? And Lily's dead, dead-and-gone and Petunia doesn't quite know what to do about that. They haven't spoken in years, but they were sisters. You couldn't stop being sisters.

Magic will only get the boy in trouble. It's what magic does, it's what that _boy's_ parents fought about _(...play with us, Sev!...)_ and the letter asks Petunia to look after and protect her nephew. She wants to refuse, wants to keep on going with her life like she doesn't believe in magic because it's for children.

But she knows better. She knows better than to think it only exists in fairy tales because she remembers sparks shooting out of a wand and peeking at Lily's schoolbooks in the night. Magic is more than the ordinary people believe and she knows it as surely as she knows the tight ball in her chest that refuses to go away. Petunia is almost a witch and a never-will-be.

Magic hurts and kills and she isn't about to let her nephew be a part of it.

So she turns to Vernon and says, "We'll squash it out of him."


End file.
